All of you saw the Veronica Mars movie last weekend, right? Right?! (If not, we hope the surgery went well, since presumably that’s your excuse.) So last week, we strolled down the hallowed halls of Neptune High with Salvador Perez, costume designer for the original series. He filled us in on the secrets behind Veronica’s pink-and-green color palette, Logan’s love of orange, the genesis of Dick’s statement tees, and so much more.

We also spoke to the film’s costume designer, Genevieve Tyrrell, to find out how she helped the beloved gang of Pirates ~mature~. The movie picks up 10 years after we last saw the cast in college, and so much has happened: Veronica has swapped her career as a private detective for a promising future as a lawyer, she’s been in a year-long relationship with Piz (Chris Lowell), and she hasn’t spoken to her epic love Logan (Jason Dohring) in NINE YEARS! But when Logan is accused of murdering his pop star girlfriend, Bonnie DeVille (née Carrie Bishop, played by Andrea Estrella), Veronica quickly ditches her new life in New York City to return to Neptune, where she confronts suspects old and new (hi, Gaby Hoffmamnn and Martin Starr!). (They play Ruby Jetson and Lou "Cobb" Cobbler, respectively.) Tyrrell dished on Veronica’s grown-up steez, Bonnie’s rock-roots fashion inspiration, and why modern-day Logan presented her with a “wardrobe conundrum.”

So when you signed on to the film, what was your first step in planning the characters’ style?

We did a breakdown of the progression of the characters. With Veronica in particular, because the series has a more ’90s sensibility, we wanted to show the passage of time, to show that she had graduated college, that she was this professional New York adult woman now. We also set about to make the initial changes that we see at the beginning in New York be different from what we then were moving to when she gets back to Neptune.

A still from 'Veronica Mars.'Photo: Warner Bros.

Sal mentioned you hadn’t seen much of the series. Did you end up having to watch a lot of it to get prepped?

Well, I watched the first season and the last season, and I talked to Sal about how he saw the characters during the series, and he gave me a ton of information about their personalities, which was incredibly helpful. And then, you know, talking to [creator] Rob [Thomas], talking to some of the producers—because we see the characters in this one-week period in the movie. Dick and Logan and everybody has had life happen since we last saw them, so it was important to get that information.

OK, Marshmallows, the fan-funded Veronica Mars movie is only a day away from theaters. Are you as excited/relieved as we are (impossible) that Veronica will finally be reunited with Logan, her one true love (sorry-not-sorry, Piz), as well as Wallace, Mac, Dick, and the rest of the Neptune Pirates?

Top: Lilly and Veronica in a flashback, Bottom: Logan and VeronicaPhoto: Warner Bros.

Well, not so fast. First, let’s wallow in our nostalgia for creator Rob Thomas’ brilliant, short-lived series, which aired on UPN/The CW from 2004 until 2007 and starred Kristen Bell as a droll teenage detective trying to solve the murder of her best friend (Amanda Seyfried) in the small beach town of Neptune, California. The series ended after three seasons with things between Veronica and (obligatory-psychotic-jackass-turned-epic-love-interest) Logan (Jason Dohring) left tragically unresolved. The open-ended, unsatisfying finale only served to spur on a fandom that multiplied like gremlins in water over the six years since the series was yanked from the small screen, with the result being enough wallet-wielding followers that the proposed film version raised and surpassed its Kickstarter goal of $2 million within its first 11 hours, breaking records, causing aftershocks in pop culture, and becoming a cancelled-series fandom/crowd-funding legend.

The characters all grown up in stills from the 'Veronica Mars' movie.Photo: Warner Bros.

And who could forget Veronica in those chunky Fluevog boots and military jackets? Or Logan's triumphant smoldering amid all that orange? Or Dick (Party Down's Ryan Hansen) rocking those smarmy statement tees? You’ve already seen the trailer, so you probably noticed how all growed up everybody is. Veronica is wearing black(!) pantsuits now, Mac (Tina Marjorino) has an awesome hair cut, and is that Logan looking perfectly at home in a fitted dress shirt? But before we swoon over the characters’ updated styles with the film’s costume designer, Genevieve Tyrrell, which we will do next week (so check back), we wanted to talk to the man who first put puka shells on Logan Echolls: series costume designer Salvador Perez (Pitch Perfect, The Mindy Project). “Rob created those characters, and he made them interesting, but I made them look cool,” says Perez. Indeed, and we have about 97 questions for him.

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